Late last year, Lia Kes opened an intimate Upper East Side shop. It’s a single room, painted black, so the focus remains on her thoughtfully crafted clothes. The designer chose to hold private appointments there this season, and two key garments were suspended in the center of the room: a billowing white silk blouse and wrap dress stained with sporadic drips of black and blue watercolor. “It was very important for me to convey randomness and let the pigment speak its language,” she said.

Kes finished the watery motif in August after a solo trip to Roatán, an island off Honduras, where she spent hours underwater exploring the coral reefs. “It was the first time in seven years I had that kind of freedom, and when I came back, I had a different peace and lightness in me,” she said. And so for Spring, we saw a lighter Kes with easy, more wearable versions of her signature items. Think: a short lemon yellow slip; a white linen jumpsuit, cut and sewn like denim; and a striking black silk charmeuse version one could live in.

The organic fabrics remained exquisite, and it was a joy to see the colors at play from the continuing collaboration with Liz Spencer, the natural dyer from California. Her techniques yielded a richness and depth that was uncontrolled in the best way—the randomness so important to Kes. The pale lilac was stunning, as was the mottled electric indigo. It’s also worth noting the beauty of Kes’s “recycled” garments. Those standout slip dresses with raw-edged webbing? Each one is spliced from the spare scraps of silk often discarded in the cutting process.